Hiatus

i have decided after some deliberation this week, to take a hiatus from blogging. Perhaps a month or so, until the summer is over— i think it may be searing my brain, short circuiting some of the neuronal connections, my dendrites are firing blanks.
i furthermore, received a high number of rushed rejections from journals which tells me a number of conflicting things: that the journals didn’t even bother to read the poems properly, further adding to my inkling that there is a hell of a lot of cronyism going on. My poems are not good enough. i am not presenting myself as best i can; i have no ego for this; i don’t like myself enough to be confidant in the etiquette of the submitter’s voice. i am trying to write for the journals, which is showing in the poems, absent of the honesty in my usual poetic voice: i am not an experimental poet, it seems & need to know the boundaries of my experimenting with syntactical units to affect my themes— i blame Roy Fisher. i am thus choosing the wrong journals to submit my poems. i just don’t know what the hell is going on anymore, the world terrifies me more & more each day & i don’t know how to be happy about anything anymore because i am so confused about the positions we can take because taking one omits others & that leaves us standing on an ever encroaching shore on all sides that is eating the land around us, until we are marooned on a 4 by 4 bank of sand surrounded by a boisterous ocean. i am struggling to produce enough poems for journals & the blog. i want to post my best poems on the blog & to journals, but i don’t have the time to write for both, so i feel my writing is getting sloppy. i think some time out will allow me to replenish my stores & focus on finding some matching journals. Anyone who thinks a journal or magazine would be interested in my poems, please let me know & i can look into that journal & submit.
i am sure in the chaos of everything & the uncertainty of my mind these days that i am missing a lot. As much as blogging helps me write, it is a cause of anxiety at the moment, because i have gotten a glimmer of attention & worry if i don’t perform i will loose the few readers i have worked hard to form relationships with. Have i worked that hard? i dunno. i sure feel an obligation to post & continue dialogues with the poets & bloggers i enjoy reading. i feel now that as my stores are dwindling, i am perhaps writing with less attention & branching to themes i might not have a decent enough grasp of to justify writing about. i need to spend some time considering again what kind of poet i want to be & how i am going to unify any new directions to the voice i know i am confident with. i take poetry very serious, perhaps too serious & witnessing myself lose sight of what kind of poet i want to be, i must reel myself in & give myself a decent talking to, make sure of my purposes.
On top of this i have a bag of bones narrative poem which i want to but a good deal of focus on. i want to get it into shape for sending to publishers. A few bloggers have been kind enough to read my first draft & steer me a little (you know who you are) but i could do with more strong readers willing to help me. i particularly need a woman to help me get the voice of my protagonist right. So if you want to help me, please email me at danielpaulmarshall85@gmail.com & i’ll send you my draft to read over. Any feedback would be helpful.
So i’ll take my little hiatus & see what i can do. This all sounds very dramatic, but i felt a message worthwhile if only to not seem ignorant if i don’t reply or give the poets i enjoy reading any attention. i will return with, i hope, sacks of poems & maybe some prose.

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After living in Korea for shy a decade, I find myself back in England, penalized for my turned back, awaiting a move to Exeter, where I will study an MA in English, with focus on environmental studies. These days I am reading inveterately, owing to my no longer living without the means to buy books & books & books. My reading interest lie in contemporary philosophy, ecology, ecological philosophy, object orientated ontology & speculative realism. These ideas are leaching into my poetry & essays.

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23 Comments

I hope the break helps. I’ll always read, time permitting. I think you answered your own questions in writing this, but I’ll add- taking a position on something doesn’t mean reneging the freedom to change your mind. Enjoy the sunshine 😊

Ha I was going to say in the last comment that I qualify in that I’m a woman but not sure in what other way…but then I thought that sounded like fishing for compliments so I was going to email you and offer my feedback as just one of many iterations of what a woman is.

Do it. i cannot claim to know women, so i decided to write a female protagonist in a poem & see how i fair. But if as a qualifying woman you tell me it is all nonsense, i would take that on board & see what i can do, if you give ample advice, which i am certain you are more than able to do.

I find that the most important writers & poets that I follow and carry a meaningful dialogue with have suddenly gone absent this past week or so. I felt it was an occupational burnout that happened due to the crazy amount of activity we’ve incited in each other these past months. It’s been a wild ride of high output for each one of us I think. I’ve slowed down to a crawl myself and planned on taking the blog from a more casual level. I think you’re in good company.
Get the rest you need. Refuel the creative rockets, find your center. I look forward to what new insights you’ll share when this hiatus is done. Good luck, my friend.

Thanks Pablo. i have been writing so much & i just looked over a lot of it & thought it not up to scratch & it struck me i need to take a time out from some things to make room for others. i need to read mostly to process some things & then transfer them into what i need. Spread yourself too thin & the loss is palpable. Thanks for the “meaningful dialogue” & i have no concerns we can pick up where we left off.

Sounds like the time for reflection on all the work you’ve been doing. Rewrites and edits. Sharpen your prose, clarify your metaphors, allegories, symbolisms and the many literary devices you understand so well.

Reflection on the necessity of much of it. i have to try to transpose the voice i know onto other topics, to sound like myself in another register, if that makes sense. i want to be more general, to be able to write about the world at large, perhaps, but not to fudge it by sounding didactic, overly wrought or cliche. i want ideas in my poems, but i want them to be earnest, which is difficult without being part of the subject other than to have read a couple of books on it. i am confidant in my Korea poems because they are directly experienced & the topic i find important, because it is untapped. But the books i read & correlating them to what is going on in the larger social context we find ourselves in, is difficult, because despite being somewhat a part of it, we aren’t directly involved. It is a pickle.

I enjoy poetry that has a clear subject, even if embellished. To me, Okaji’s Scarecrow takes a few reads to get at the point it makes, though most of his stuff I find too vague to really bite my teeth into. Miller’s Stone Age imagery is brilliant, but it shines light years above the majority of his work. Your Charley Malurkey’s are strong, as well as your Korea Poems. Some of your short verse poems for instance, the recent Korean-market piece, was very pointed. I liked that. I know that your poetry is crafted. Each line seems to carry a significant part of the whole, building on a theme. But often that theme is hard to decipher, for me. Readers who are versed in the rules of poetry will find in them tantalizing puzzles. It depends on who you are trying to reach. But then again, what do I know?

1. Let me be clear about this : I am liking your post because taking a break is good, not because I “like” you taking a break and not posting your great work! 🙂

2. Wait a minute. Pablo said: “I find that the most important writers & poets that I follow and carry a meaningful dialogue with have suddenly gone absent this past week or so…”. He follows me, and I have been active! D’oh! Looks like I am going to have to start vastly improving the quality of my writing! LOL!

Thanks Daniel. & thanks for the email link you sent. Not got round to reading yet, but will do. Yoon Yong is into a 2nd draft & the form has been changed, i see a lot more structure being put in. It is becoming increasingly apparent to me as i comb through it that it needs a narrative scaffold, something to work alongside, a timeline of sorts.
Daniel, you don’t need to improve anything, just keep writing more. Your posts are some of the most enjoyable things i read. i am sorry i won’t get around to them, but email me when the Sun Ra post is up, i’ll come along for that one.

Thank you. You don’t fancy the task of doing a spot of reading for me do you? If so, drop me an email & i’ll send it you. But please don’t if you don’t want to, i don’t mind. But if i don’t ask, i can’t get. i never ask for short poems, but this long narrative is really unlike anything i wrote before & i could use a good reader & critic to help me.

“ There, I am desperately free and naive; but knowing this oh dear happiness, dear misery; there is no distinctive sign except that one tearing one’s heart, and a smile destined to nobody(...)" E.Stachura